Henry Roth - Mercy of a Rude Stream - The Complete Novels

“At which I got hot under the collar,” Larry added. “Especially when my officious sister Irma suggested that maybe Sam, being a lawyer, ought to go see Edith and talk things over with her. I told them flatly it was none of their business.”

Edith, Larry had already let it be known emphatically, Edith would be gone for most of the summer. She had already made arrangements to travel to Europe, so his getting a job as entertainer or singing waiter was no subterfuge for going to live with her, or eloping, or whatever lurid imaginings they might have (and they did indeed seem to have them, if Larry’s report of their behavior was any indication: they sometimes seemed beside themselves, especially his father). It was just a summer job, he kept insisting, a job, not an overture to disaster.

Much to his surprise, Sam agreed with him. Intensifying their opposition to the youth’s love affair might only drive the two lovers together, so Larry gathered from hints dropped by Irma, and from pumping their Hungarian serving woman, with whom he was a favorite. Getting a B.A. from CCNY was not the worst thing that could happen to Larry, was the gist of Sam’s argument. Sam had gotten his B.A. there too, and gone on to be a lawyer. And who knew what would happen in three years, the changes that might take place in the youth — and in her, Edith? After all, she was an intelligent woman; she could foresee the consequences of the disparity in their ages a few years hence. Larry might even recognize the wisdom of eventually getting his degree in dentistry. Their best policy, Sam urged, would be a sort of truce. Let Larry have his way. He was head over heels in love at the present. In time he might come to his senses. Or she might. There were always those possibilities. Laissez-faire . .

They adopted Sam’s counsel, but with little grace. They continued to simmer beneath the surface, barely suppressing their opposition to the course Larry was committed to taking. And worst of all, as far as Ira was concerned, a by-product of their resentment of Larry’s flouting of their convictions of what was in his best interest, they believed Ira had a hand in his friend’s disastrous design. They believed he had helped Larry concoct the scheme. Or if not that, then by his own pauperish example, his indifference to commercial and financial matters, his lack of ambition, he had undermined Larry’s healthy practicality concerning things material, led Larry astray. Ira no longer felt welcome at the home of the Gordons. In his reluctance to meet Larry there, unless Larry’s relatives were absent, he declined supper invitations, frankly proposed meetings elsewhere, sometimes in a cafeteria, sometimes in Washington Square Park.

And when Larry, after his very first interview — with the manager of Copake Lodge in the Catskill Mountains — was informed that the management had already filled its quota of entertainers, but was offered a singing waiter job, even though, as the manager remarked, Larry was bumping someone else more or less assured of the same job, he accepted the offer immediately. At Larry’s earnest importuning, Ira attended a sort of farewell reunion for his friend before he departed for the resort. Cordiality toward him had vanished almost entirely from the Gordons’ reception. Mere recognition, something akin to sufferance, was all they vouchsafed.

And yet, oddly enough, though Ira could protest with good semblance of faith that he had nothing to do with Larry’s change of career, Ira still felt a recurring sense of guilt, a fuzzy culpability that told him he deserved the ill-disguised censure emanating toward him from Larry’s close relatives. He felt that in some obscure way he was influencing Larry, subverting his will. It went even further than that in Ira’s untrammeled imagination: he deserved the censure of Larry’s folks for helping mislead one they doted on, because he not only approved all Larry did but, like an understudy, conned all Larry did. It was all very strange. And confused. Yes, he felt guilty. No, he had nothing to do with it. Yes, he was taking advantage of his friend — he had always taken advantage of his friend, using him. But how the hell could it be otherwise? His friend had wanted him involved.

Long were the dialogues he audited in Edith’s apartment. (And again, why should he have been there? Why did they both want him there?) They were dialogues he rarely entered into, not at the beginning certainly. They were dialogues he barely understood at first, he only slowly, slowly grasped their import, their abstract assumptions, which he could only do by filling them with specific references and examples: the Middle Class. Their values. The Middle Class, their materialism, their emphasis on acquisition, their striving for material things: for mink coats, for the latest in Grand Rapids furniture, for prestigious addresses. (Jesus, didn’t they know what 119th Street was all about? Didn’t everybody want to climb out of those cold-water slums?) The Middle Class, their abject subservience to convention, to keeping up with the Joneses. The Middle Class and their stifling of the Artist, or even the Artiste. Ah, that was their worst offense: in their demand for conformity they allowed the Artist no latitude; they condemned him to mediocrity. The Artist had to be free to express himself, and especially to give vent to his disillusionment with hollow Middle-Class standards, Middle-Class pretensions to morality, Middle-Class hypocrisy, shams, crassness. And ever and again, these faults and woeful shortcomings, these constraints and impediments were exemplified by the Gordons — Edith continually warned about the dangers inherent in Larry’s family for him, the snares and temptations they would place in his way, their appeals to family loyalty, to his natural tenderness. On and on.

But what should he do? Larry asked. He had already taken the first step to oppose them. Next fall: CCNY. What else, what next? It was up to him, Edith said: it would depend on how provoked his family might become by the new direction he had taken, and how unpleasant their opposition to the change might be: the pressure of disapprobation on him personally, as well as the enticements they would put in his way. They had already shown their hand by their offer to send him to Bermuda to stay with his uncle till the next academic year, and afterward attend Columbia University. But she was always ready to help, should he decide to sever all ties: to pay rent for a room, to see that he had enough to eat, subsidize his attendance at CCNY—

Oh, no, he could take care of that, Larry immediately assured her. He had the salesman’s knack, he could sell, after school. He could get a part-time job anytime. Action on so drastic a break with his folks could be deferred. Transition could and should be more gradual. He had to consider his father’s condition, especially. After all, his folks did have his welfare at heart, however mistakenly they perceived that welfare. He owed them a gradual transition. Let them see that he could get a bachelor’s degree at CCNY (as she too had recommended), even though in preparation not for the profession of dentistry, but for a writing career. And first and foremost he meant to accustom them to his attending CCNY while he lived at home; that would appease their anxiety. Another year, he might take the next step, move into a small apartment, and they might be reconciled to it. Edith agreed. It would be unnecessarily cruel to his parents to quit NYU, renounce a professional career, and leave home all at one and the same time; it would cause unnecessary distress, to his parents and to his close kin.

It was all very stirring, full of dark assessments and pending adventure, prediction and suspense. Intriguing, engrossing promises of exhilarating future that had the power in a moment to preempt for Ira any assignment in any subject — and even classroom instruction. “You began the term by doing A work.” Pedantic, precise Dr. Laine, professor of French, raised his fine, delicately pastel features from his recitation grade book and cautioned Ira with chiseled words. “You’ve slipped very badly of late.”